Job Discussion Forums

[womblingfree]

[alexcase]

Sorry if I misrepresented you, womblingfree, I was trying to say your research interested me and trying to draw a conclusion from it. You said the students were happier than the teachers. In terms of keeping the teachers happy and keeping the teachers, did you have any ideas yourself?

Distance is certainly a factor, btw, and you are right of course that nothing can be done about- except maybe schools offering flight money, holidays long enough to make it worth going home, and holiday time when flights are cheap

[Vince]

[alexcase]

Good point, Vince. When we talk about improving things in a shrinking market, money is always the crunch point. Letting teachers combine their holidays into longer periods and allowing them that holiday when flights are cheaper should sometimes be possible with further expense for the school, though.

[Vince]

I'm not convinced that opportunity to return home is a major problem. Most of the teachers I knew went home once a year or two. Those who didn't typically had long-term lives established in Japan and pursued local interests during their vacations.

Before going further, reconsider your notions about the average EFL teacher in Japan. You said in your blog that many of us are hiding from home, Japanese pop culture nerds...basically losers. It's no wonder your threads got off to a bad start when the subtext is, from a national perspective, that we're the losers of TEFL. The Japanese TEFL crowd is much more diverse than the picture painted in your blog.

[alexcase]

I did mention people who are interested in otaku culture and people who choose somewhere a long way from home and very different as an escape from reality (e.g. as a chance to reinvent themselves). I have personal experience of both kinds of people in Japan having problems with their teaching because of these reasons- either because of a lack of interpersonal skills (which it must be said some other people seem to magically develop once they step into the classroom and have no problems with) or because their lack of life skills means their personal problems eventually start affecting their classes. In no case do I say there are "many" teachers for any one of the possible problems I have brainstormed. I have personally known of a few of each.

In the case of the otaku thing, I have not met or heard about it outside Japan (Tintin obsessives in Belgium perhaps), I would be genuinely interested to hear if anyone has. In the case of the running away thing, of course I have seen it everywhere. I posit simply that people probably run away more often to places that are far away and exotic, e.g. Japan, rather than an American going to Canada or an Englishman going to Denmark to escape from reality. Again, please let me know if your experience, readings, research etc. shows me that I am wrong- that is after all what a forum is for. But again, I am not saying there are many of any one category in Japan, nor have I ever said most teachers here are bad.

If anyone else believes there are less than 200 bad native speaker English teachers in the whole of Japan (including ALTs, Eikaiwa, further education, international schools, what have you), which was my latest attempt to define "many", and that having less would be a bad thing, they live in a different Japan to the one I live in, speak about and read about. I also stress that I see this as a possible way of starting a positive process of improving the industry- a process that cannot start if I am defending my original questions or every single point I have brainstormed all the time.

[Vince]

I realize you don't want to use the word, but it still sounds like you're saying there are too many losers in TEFL in Japan. We know there are people of all stripes in every profession, but it's assuming a lot to say that the aggregate character of EFL teachers in Japan is worse than in other countries. You also haven't touched on how the Japanese students and administrators might be influencing the situation.

I think you're going to reach a point where you realize that the most you can do is to be the best teacher you can be, and hope that your example influences those around you. In every endeavor in which I've been involved, this was the bottom line.

With that, I'll take my leave from this thread.

[womblingfree]

[TokyoLiz]

alexcase,

If this issue of teacher quality is so important to you, connect with people who show you committment and professionalism.

ELT in Japan http://jalt.org/

Canadian Teachers in Japan http://actj.org/joomla/

Canada http://www.tesl.ca/

Australia http://www.atesolnsw.org/

And make friends with professionals through Teachers College Columbia University, Temple University Japan Campus, The British Council in Tokyo.

[J.]

Thanks for those useful links!

I haven't read the blog in question but let me respond to just one point you made, alexcase. You said something along the lines that people came to Japan to escape reality. The" reality" a lot of us came to escape was no teaching jobs at home.

[Sherri]

Great links TokyoLiz, thank you for posting them! No sense re-inventing the wheel.

Sherri

[alexcase]

I agree, thanks for the links. Might I also mention the one organisation that I do belong to, ETJ?

http://www.eltnews.com/ETJ/

Keep on meaning to join JALT, and before I know it another year has passed... Will make sure I remember to take a nice crisp 10,000 yen note to the ETJ Expo in November and really sign up this time.

I still have to ask, though- is this forum in some way not a fit place to discuss the quality of teaching in Japan and how it could be improved? Perhaps it is only a place to give advice, for which it indeed seems to be useful for- but I must say that is not what the word "forum" suggests to me.

We ask our students to try to answer "big questions" in discussion classes, debates and IELTS speaking- is there some reason why we should limit ourselves to always discussing the specific minute details of our own teaching lives? I can understand the irritation of a student who does not want to take IELTS saying "Why do we have to discuss this?", but to the two or three people who have had that reaction on this thread I can only answer "You don't".

I find this topic intellectually stimulating and I believe there is a chance (however remote) that something practical could come of it. In fact, what people have said has already prompted me to take 2 concrete steps, and writing this has just reminded me to take the 3rd. Joining JALT will be the 4th. For those who don't find it stimulating or useful, that is what the "stop following thread" button is for. If you are worried about not having the last word, I promise I am not going to mention any of the arguments anywhere previous on this thread again.

[Sherri]

[alexcase]

Sherri, I have asked specific questions about teaching in further education institutions and international schools in Japan and people have chosen to ignore them, despite this being my attempt to respond to their complaints that I was not being specific enough. Well, that is their right and I have the right to avoid most distractions and stick to the question I started this thread with. The one thing I will pick you up on is- how can the things I have said not be true of any teachers in Japan and at the same time cover everybody who reads this thread??

I keep asking the question "Why this reaction?", even when I have made it clear that I am not talking about a majority and each particular point of my blog is one very small group that could make up part of the whole (minority) of bad teachers of various sorts in Japan, and I think I have come up with a theory that fits all the available evidence:

The reason for this knee jerk defensive reaction is that this is not the first time most of the people replying to me feel they have had to stick up for the profession or have had it denigrated with a broad brush. I know I have. And the reason people insist on breaking teaching down into subsections and asking me about my background is the easiest response to such attitudes is to say "That's not me you are talking about, that is just Eikaiwa conversation partners/ ALT pet gaijin/ once a week in a kindergarten TEFL clown. That's got nothing to do with me. I am a real teacher". An understandable reaction- short, to the point, and likely to make someone who knows nothing about the profession shut up. I am not sure it is ever the best reaction for the status of English teaching in Japan, though, and it certainly isn't the best reaction here. A few reasons:

-People who don't know better (who will always be the majority of people outside the profession despite our best efforts) will always talk about native speaker English teachers as a single group. Therefore, anything that makes them feel better about English teachers in general affects us all- especially how they feel about the native speaker English teachers they meet first. For the majority of Japanese this means ALTs and/ or Eikaiwa teachers.

- How they react to us when they first get into our classes will also be affected by their experiences with previous native speaker teachers of all stripes. For example, if they have come to believe over the years that understandable grammar explanations can only come from a Japanese teacher it will take us some weeks or months to convince them otherwise.

-The organisations you so kindly pointed out represent all English teachers, so if they do any campaigning/ press releases etc. this can affect all of us. Ditto with unions.

-The government and press usually lump all English teachers together. For example, would I be right in saying that almost all English teachers of all types are on the same type of visa (genuine question)? If so, if the government changed the rules on this we would all be affected.

I could go on, but I won't...

[stillnosheep]

Why are there so many bad English teachers in Japan?

Because they spend so much time posting daft question questions on forums instead of improving their skills?